Fort Greene: The neighborhood looks into what, if anything, could have saved the now-shuttered Green Apple Café. [Fort Greene Local/NYT]

Greenpoint: Chef Ross Hutchison is now selling his bacon marmalade, and it’s available for pickup in Greenpoint. [Greenpointers]

Greenwich Village: 120 West 3rd Street, formerly occupied by Tonnie Mini’s, will soon be turned into Gofra Bite, a Belgian-waffle shop. [Fork in the Road/VV]

Park Slope: Benchmark, a steakhouse offering five different cuts of locally sourced beef, is now open for dinner. Brunch service is in the works. [Gothamist via FIPS]

Tribeca: Benvenuto appears to be nearing its opening at the corner of Greenwich and Franklin. It is taking over the space formerly occupied by Greenwich Steak & Burger. [Tribeca Citizen]

Read more posts by Sam Dangremond

Filed Under: neighborhood watch, bacon marmalade, benchmark, benvenuto, ev grieve, gofra bite, greenpoint, greenpointers, greenwich village, midtown, nolita, park slope, ramen totto, ross hutchison, tonnie mini’s, tribeca, tribeca citizen, williamsburg, yakitori totto

• 0 Comments

Sean MacPherson (Jane Hotel, Waverly Inn, etc.) has bought the Crow’s Nest Inn & Restaurant in Montauk. The top tastemaker tells Guest of a Guest: “We bought it and I plan on doing it and we will run it as is this season and reopen it as the new, improved Crow’s Nest next season.” Of course, Montauk wasn’t exactly receptive to its previous nouveau arriviste, Surf Lodge, and MacPherson didn’t exactly hit it off with his West Village neighbors, so this should be very interesting indeed.

Sean MacPherson To Snatch Up Crow’s Nest Hotel In Montauk [Guest of a Guest]

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: meanwhile in the hamptons, crow’s nest inn and restaurant, jane hotel, montauk, sean macpherson

• 0 Comments

Today, on the spur of the moment, Diva2 had lunch at Tuscan Hills, the new upscale Italian restaurant in Forest Hills…

Tuscan Hills

115-20 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills

(718) 487-4500

• 0 Comments

Diva2 here: I had occasion to be around 2nd Avenue and 12th Street on Sunday, so a stop into Little Poland, a…

Little Poland Restaurant

200 2nd Ave, New York

(212) 777-9728

• 0 Comments

Earlier today, a tipster sent in word: “Pretty sure Tiny’s is done for, and if so, I would be devastated. This place made the best sandwiches I have ever tasted. EVER. SPICY RIZZAK RIP.” Of course, our tipster is speaking of Tiny’s Giant Sandwich Shop, the Lower East Sider that predated the current sandwich craze.

The timing is eerie, since Serious Eats profiled the Spicy Rizzak today, just hours before word got out about the closure. One of that site’s commenters says the shop has been closed for “at least a couple of weeks.” It’s uncertain whether Tiny’s will reopen — a call to their number was forwarded to an area-code 917 number with a full mailbox.

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: closings, lower east side, spicy rizzak, tiny’s giant sandwich shop

• 0 Comments

While Café Habana owner Sean Meenan scores a splashy interview with BlackBook, another Nolita long-timer, Luciane Gilan, is in trouble. Earlier today word hit the blogs that CB Richard Ellis is attempting to find a retailer for the 800-square-foot corner space that for the past fifteen years has housed her neighborhood fixture Café Colonial. When Gilan spoke to Grub Street just now, she sounded like she had all but given up: “Our city is giving us more laws and regulations,” she stammered. “Everything’s harder. People are more mean. It’s just not fun anymore.” Gilan believes her rent tripled thanks in part to new neighbor Keith McNally, and she may just retire when her lease expires May 31.

According to Gilan, her landlord came to her last October claiming that another tenant was interested in the 30-seat space, and that she would have to go unless she could match their $30,000 offer. Currently, Gilan says she has a “triple net” lease that finds her paying $10,000 per month plus real-estate taxes and the water bill (this ends up being almost $13,000). “I’m not lying to you,” she says. “I’m really struggling.” Gilan says she asked the landlord to understand that she was going through a divorce that involved splitting her assets, but the landlord wasn’t interested in talking. In November, a “For Lease” sign went up over her restaurant and her request that it be taken down because it was hurting business was ignored. Now she says the space is being listed at $20,000 (“one block from Whole Foods,” the listing trumpets), but Gilan says even that is too much for her. “I even called another person who owns a lot of restaurants — he came and looked at our place and our size and he said, ‘It’s insane — you can’t make a living with $20,000 rent.’” (On the other hand, Gilan says she has heard that her new neighbor Keith McNally pays $30,000 per month in rent for a much larger space).

There’s little doubt in Gilan’s mind that her landlord’s motives have much to do with Pulino’s: “I know people who know [the landlord] and they told me what’s going on. He said, ‘McNally is opening a place and he wants to bring people over and we might get a high-end boutique.’” So does she resent her new neighbor? “I think that he is genuinely a good restaurateur and he does good — the problem is that the landlords think, Oh, because he’s a good guy he’s going to bring a lot of customers around. So people get greedy and make rents go up. I don’t think we, as people who live here, gain anything by having these kinds of things here. Because you know what, who’s going to shop in a high-end boutique? I can’t and any local people can’t.”

So will Café Colonial open at a different location? As of now, no. Gilan has looked at a 2,000-square-foot space on Elizabeth Street that’s going for $10,000 (she’s wary of moving more than a block away, since she might lose customers), but she says that building a kitchen alone would cost her $200,000 that she doesn’t have. “To open up a place like my small restaurant right now in Manhattan you need $400,000,” she says. “Now with regulations and Bloomberg, everything has to be up to code — the sprinkler system, the plumber, the bathrooms … You need a certain amount of commercial gas to come inside, you can’t just work with home gas. I have to get a special license, and that can take two or three months to get all those permits.” Gilan says she’s also vexed by credit-card fees, late fees on sales-tax payments (her accountant recently had to straighten out a $1,000 fine), rising Con Ed costs ($4,000 per month), and a litany of paperwork (for a sidewalk café, for instance) that requires legal help.

She tells us, “I got to the point where I said, ‘I’m quitting.’ Maybe I’ll change my mind, I don’t know.”

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: endangered, cafe colonial, cafe habana, keith mcnally, nolita, pulino’s

• 0 Comments

The Crop to Cup coffee company launched three years ago in Brooklyn and Chicago, importing beans from small family farmers in Uganda, roasting them off-site in small batches at Ozzie’s and Gillies, and distributing them to wholesale accounts at restaurants like Double Crown, Green Table, Highlands, and Saltie. This week or next (permits pending), the business expands into the retail sector with a Brooklyn Heights café. But as Crop to Cup co-founder Taylor Mork tells it, this new venture isn’t quite your average urban coffee bar. It’s a retail co-op, managed and curated by its members, and “everything except the espresso machine is for sale.”

“Everything,” in this case, means not just the coffee drinks, made with Battenkill Valley Creamery milk from Salem, New York, but also the antique furniture and all its contents. Eventually, once the business is in full swing, armoires will be filled with clothes, and shelves stocked with flower teas and locally made foods like McClure’s Pickles, Nunu Chocolates, and Early Bird Granola — these last two, like Crop to Cup, are habitual vendors at Brooklyn Flea. The space, at Atlantic Avenue’s western edge, has sat vacant for years, after prior incarnations as a clothing store and charcuterie shop, and Mork considers the renovation process “bringing the space back to life.”

Even before the coffee starts to flow, the storefront has begun serving the community as a drop-off point for Basis, a farm-to-chef distributor that recently launched a home-food delivery program. Basis will also provide ingredients for the daily set menu Mork hopes to serve once the full kitchen is up and running. Until then, expect to find pastries and desserts from the likes of Kumquat Cupcakery, espresso drinks, drip coffee, and single-serve cups prepared on enough devices (all for sale, naturally) to satisfy the gadget-minded contemporary coffee geek — French-press pots, Clever Coffee Drippers, and Hario drippers from Japan among them.

Crop to Cup Cafe, 139 Atlantic Ave., nr. Henry St., Brooklyn Heights; no phone yet.

Read more posts by Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

Filed Under: openings, basis, coffee, crop to cup, double crown, early bird granola, highlands, kumquat cupcakery, mcclure’s pickles, nunu chocolates, saltie

• 0 Comments

It’s 4 p.m., and that means it’s time to play Two for Eight. We just asked ten restaurants the best time they could squeeze a couple in for dinner; you need only make your chosen reservation. (As always, we make the calls but don’t guarantee the results.) Today: Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio.

Bar Room at the Modern (Menu)
212-333-1220
Two for eight? Yes

Craft (Menu)
212-780-0880
Two for eight? No
Best available: 9:30 p.m.

Craftbar (Menu)
212-461-4300
Two for eight? Yes

Colicchio & Sons (Menu)
212-400-6699
Two for eight? Yes

Eleven Madison Park (Menu)
212-889-0905
Two for eight? No
Best available: 8:15 p.m.

Gramercy Tavern (Menu)
212-477-0777
Two for eight? No
Best available: 7:30

Tabla (Menu)
212-889-0667
Two for eight? Yes

Union Square Café (Menu)
212-243-4020
Two for eight? No
Best available: 9:00 p.m.

Filed Under: two for eight, bar room at the modern, craft, craftbar, craftsteak, eleven madison park, gramercy tavern, union square cafe tabla

• 0 Comments

This photo of Fort Defiance’s table at last night’s Village Voice Choice Eats event (after it was cleared of 732 deviled eggs with pickled mustard seeds and smoked black peppers) is pretty indicative of how the Über tasting went down. Cheeky, Dirt Candy, Spot, and many others were cleaned out even earlier than that, and though Sara Jenkins of Porchetta may have fed 300 hungry marines, no way was she making it to 9 p.m. here.

This must’ve rankled people who waited an hour in line, but the couple sucking face near Purple Yam’s sliders didn’t seem to mind. After all, it was all for a good cause — namely, feeding bloggers with content! Check out coverage below, starting with word from Eating in Translation that Café Glechik will open a Sheepshead Bay location in two weeks, and An Choi will expand next door.

By the way, if you’re still bummed about missing Porchetta, Motorino, Luke’s Lobster, Max and the like, they’ll all be back in action (along with many others) during the Food Bank for New York City’s Time Out for Hunger.

Choice Eats 2010 [Eating in Translation]
Eat Cetera: Choice Eats, Local Bread, and Kenmare [Gothamist]
2010 Village Voice Choice Eats is a Hit [I Dream of Pizza]
Choice Eats Gives Midtown the Cold Shoulder Once Again [Midtown Lunch]
Live Blogging Choice Eats: The Visual Evidence, Part 1 and Part 2 [Fork in the Road/VV]
Rebecca Marx Live Blogging Choice Eats Part 1, 2, and 3 [Fork in the Road/VV]
Sweets at Choice Eats! [City Sweet Tooth]

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: foodievents, an choi, cafe glechik, cheeky, dirt candy, porchetta, purple yam, spot dessert bar, tastings, village voice choice eats

• 0 Comments

If you perused our list of restaurants that would get a C grade from the Health Department under new rules, you may have been unsurprised to notice that Great N.Y. Noodletown was one of the worst offenders, having racked up 50 demerit points during a February inspection that uncovered evidence of flies, roaches, and mice, among other things. Now Eater reports that the Health Department, finding nothing sacred, closed the joint on Friday night and it remains shuttered. Plan your early mornings accordingly.

Great NY Noodletown Gets Shut Down by DOH [Eater NY]

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: temporary closings, chinatown, department of health, great n.y. noodletown

• 0 Comments

On the same day that Thomas Keller reveals that Yakitori Totto is one of his local haunts, Eater hears that Ryuichi “Bobby” Munekata’s empire, which also includes Soba Totto, Yakitori Torys, and Aburiya Kinnosuke, will expand to include Ramen Totto, opening somewhere in midtown in April. Midtown Lunch remembers that the shuttered Bombay Eats at 314 West 52nd Street is turning into a ramen shop and wonders whether it might be Totto’s.

Yakitori Totto Empire Expands With Midtown’s Ramen Totto [Eater NY]
Ramen Totto Taking Over Bombay Eats Space?! [Midtown Lunch]

Read more posts by Daniel Maurer

Filed Under: openings, japanese, midtown, ramen, ramen totto, soba totto, yakitori totto

• 0 Comments

Initially, I thought it might feature NYC staple foods such as hot dogs or possibly a pastrami sandwich on rye. But…

NYC Cravings (Mobile Cart)

mobile cart, New York

(212) 479-7990

• 0 Comments